CITY FRAMES COLUMN: Church Street blues

BENGALURU: I am going to narrate a love story. It is the story of my love for one of Bengaluru’s iconic roads, Church Street. It is one of the roads in namma Garden City that I have always cherished walking on. Located near the bustling MG Road, it was the right place for a stroll even on the busiest of days. There were many reasons I was besotted with the road: for one, it is a hotspot for commercial establishments -- from book shops to eateries, pubs and stationery stores -- and yet, wouldn’t be as crowded as its neighbour, the window-shopping paradise that is Brigade Road. This, along with its minimal traffic levels, meant that Church Street was my amour, and my relationship with her was straight out of a Mills and Boon paperback. I always liked being with her, and she never hesitated to bestow on me her blessings. As the cliché goes, it was a match made in heaven.But just as luck would have it, our relationship came under strain, when the road’s renovation was kicked off under the TenderSURE project.Missed deadlines were only part of the problem in our relationship. Her basic nature changed for the worse. The road’s topography changed – it had to be dug up totally – and brought with it the all-too familiar problem of dust. The open sewers that pedestrians then came face-to-face with meant that they had to become experts in breathing exercises. And then came the rains by the bucketful. Slush, stench and dust combined to form a deadly cocktail that would put off any sane-minded individual. It was the Mt Everest, it was the Marianas Trench -- traversing Church Street soon became the domain of explorers. I began to invent excuses to avoid meeting her. Our meetings became brief and would inevitably end in an argument or physical strain. I began to seek the company of her friends -- MG Road, Brigade Road, St Marks Road, to name a few. It wasn’t long before she started suspecting my fidelity. I reassured her, saying that I still seek solace in our yesteryear photographs, but she wouldn’t relent. I was badly in need of a happy tiding to resurrect this relationship.First came the marriage counselors – engineers and senior officials from civic agencies such as the BESCOM, BWSSB and BSNL. They assured us that this would be a passing phase. The reassurances worked, but only in part. Basic works like shifting of utility lines overshot deadlines. They suggested that we meet once in four weeks or so, and depending on the progress of civil works, they prescribed an increase in frequency. The solution offered only temporary respite.Senior counselors such as ministers offered a booster shot. Every time they visited her and pulled up officials for tardy progress, we started believing that we could put ourselves back on track. In parallel, we began to make progress with each meeting. I explained that I could not risk a dust allergy or asthma attack, what with all the cement and construction jelly heaped around. Gradually, she came around to see my side of the story.The biggest turnaround, however, came recently with the commencement of paving of Church Street with granite cobblestones. Her nature improved; and she was now more receptive than ever before. Pedestrians could now walk with carefree abandon as they would a long time ago, albeit in a stretch of the road.Neither of us needed to be told that divorce was no more an option. Realisation dawned on us that our relationship was indeed for a lifetime!